Idemitsu Art Award 2025 Grand Prize Winner Interview

I was nervous when I received the news. Of course, I was very happy, but I think my wife and mother were happier than I was.

No, I had never entered the Idemitsu Art Award or any other open exhibitions. I will be moving to my hometown of Shizuoka next spring, so I applied for the first time with the intention of trying something new while I am still in Tokyo.
In Tokyo, there are plenty of connections with people, information, and museums and galleries, so by posting my drawings on Instagram, I started getting offers to exhibit and be featured in magazines. I think you can create art wherever you are, but I thought that if I could win the grand prize at an open exhibition now, it would motivate me even more.

─ Out of the many open exhibitions available, why did you choose the Idemitsu Art Award?

The judges were curators from my favorite art museums, so I really wanted them to see my work. Also, there were some winning works from the Shell Art Prize that I liked, and they had some things in common with my own work, so I thought it would be meaningful to be recognized here.

First, I decided to try my hand at a larger piece. I usually paint acrylic paintings on smaller canvases, or I collect my favorite papers, such as packing paper or straw paper, and use them to make drawings ^*1. In the past, I've also painted on business card- or postcard-sized paper.
It had been a while since I'd drawn a large piece, and I was worried that if I concentrated on just one piece, the picture would end up being strangely stiff, so I worked on two pieces to submit at the same time to avoid straining myself. Furthermore, it felt unnatural to change the way I drew as soon as the size became larger, so I decided to try drawing a large piece as if I were using a pencil, without paying too much attention to the paints as usual.

--How did you go about creating this piece, including the techniques and methods of expression you used?

This time, in the "Materials" column of the caption, I wrote "Water" in addition to "Acrylic, Canvas" (laughs). After painting layers of color, I lay the canvas flat and drip water on it, or stand it up and drip water from above. I start with a light color and change the color tone by adjusting the amount of blur. I paint while changing the orientation so that it is difficult to distinguish between the sky and the ground, or the top and bottom, and once I have a background I am satisfied with, I look at the whole canvas.

--So you don't have a theme or plan before you start drawing?

That's right. I don't paint for anyone else, nor do I paint with any social or political themes in mind; I paint simply to satisfy myself. People sometimes tell me that my paintings are gentle, but they also express the violent, cold, and poisonous side of me.

I attended an atelier class in my hometown of Shizuoka when I was in the lower grades of elementary school. Rather than being taught techniques, it was a place where I could create what I wanted to create, such as painting pictures on fallen leaves I picked up or making my own world out of cardboard boxes. If I didn't understand something, I would get advice.
I was also creating collages ^*2, which may have led to my current style of drawing, in which motifs are arranged in a simple manner. It was around that time that I realized that drawing was something special to me.

When did you start to think that you wanted to become an artist?

Living in the countryside, I thought that people who worked in the arts were the chosen ones, and there was a time when I thought it was fine even if my work wasn't released to the world, because I could draw pictures in my daily life even if it wasn't a job.So I went to graduate school to take over the family business of a tax accountant's office, but the year before I finished, an acquaintance encouraged me to decide to become an artist instead of pursuing a career as an accountant.

In 2022 I started posting my paintings on  Instagram , and around the time I started to feel more ambitious as an artist, I was approached by a cafe gallery called Sennenichi Coffee Roastery in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, where I exhibited and sold my work.
I thought it would be amazing if I could sell just one piece, but I was surprised at how many I sold. Until then, I had been living with the feeling that I didn't have a job that I wanted to do, so I was grateful that there were people who thought my work was good and bought it, and it gave me a sense of satisfaction that it was money I had earned myself, so it motivated me to work harder as an artist.

─ That's encouraging. How did you get started on Instagram?

I'm self-taught in art, have no connections, and am not good at promoting myself, but I started because I felt I had to get some kind of message out.
Exhibitions are one way of communicating, but rather than paying for and renting a space myself, I hold them when requested and in a place that I am happy with.
I have also self-published two collections of my work: "TORITOSAKANA," a collection of my daily drawings of birds and fish, and "Works by RyoEndo 26th November 2022 to 25th March 2024," a two-year illustrated diary of a fictional character named "Barisan." The latter is a compilation of around 600 drawings per day, compiled into a collection of around 350 pages.

I kind of regret writing "message" (laughs). For example, if a river is muddy the day after a heavy rain, it may look beautiful from afar, but if humans actually set foot there, they could not survive; nature is an existence that humans cannot compete with.

─ Your work will be exhibited at the "Idemitsu Art Award Exhibition 2025." Is there anything in particular you would like visitors to look out for?

I think what you see will change depending on the distance from which you view the painting, so I would be happy if you could look at it from a distance, moving closer or further away. Once I paint a picture, the work becomes distant from me, so I hope each viewer can enjoy it in their own way. When I stand in front of the painting, I feel like I am also a viewer, thinking about it together with them.